Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Qatar Investment Authority, the
country’s sovereign-wealth fund, bought Credit Suisse Group AG’s
London headquarters and leased the building back to the Swiss
lender.

The property at One Cabot Square in the Canary Wharf
financial district has 546,114 square feet (50,736 square
meters) of space, Qatar Holding LLC, the wealth fund’s foreign
investment unit, said in a statement on its website. Zurich-based Credit Suisse agreed to lease the building until 2034,
Qatar Holding said. It didn’t disclose the transaction value.

Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co., another arm of
Qatar’s wealth fund, bought most of Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s
headquarters campus in London with Canary Wharf Group Plc in
July. Canary Wharf is controlled by Songbird Estates Plc, in
which Qatar Holdings owns almost a 28 percent stake.

A spokesman for Qatar Holding couldn’t be reached by phone
and didn’t immediately answer an e-mail seeking comment.

The Daily Telegraph reported last month that the sale-and-leaseback deal was valued at about 330 million pounds ($523
million). The newspaper didn’t cite anyone.

Qatar’s various funds also own about a 26 percent stake in
J Sainsbury Plc, the U.K.’s third-largest supermarket owner, the
Chelsea Barracks high-end residential project, Park House on
Oxford Street, Harrods Department Store and the U.S. embassy
building in Mayfair.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Andrew Blackman in Berlin at Andrew Blackman at
6223 or ablackman@bloomberg.net.